


my heart is fading out

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: even if heaven doesn't take us we tried [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Illness, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dreams vs. Reality, Human Castiel (Supernatural), Human Crowley (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-27 02:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18295121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Dean’s fever broke somewhere around midnight, just after Crowley woke Cas up to take his shift watching over him. He woke up a few hours later, sweat-soaked, and asked Cas how much of it was real.Dean recovers. Cas and Crowley debrief.Followsstimming with the trigger of the gun





	my heart is fading out

Dean’s fever broke somewhere around midnight, just after Crowley woke Cas up to take his shift watching over him. He woke up a few hours later, sweat-soaked, and asked Cas how much of it was real.

“What do you remember?” Cas responded, quietly, so he wouldn’t wake Crowley, curled up on the floor of Dean’s bedroom in a sleeping bag.

“Something about… alternate realities bleeding through to ours. The Sam I was seeing, that gave me the bullet… Not-Sam with the gunshot wound… was real. In a universe where he survived the trials.”

Cas tilted his head slightly, in a way he hoped was comforting. “It is possible to make connections between realities, but it would have to be intentional. I do not recall Sam in any form making an appearance. The bullet you… tried to swallow… was from your gun.”

“Oh,” Dean shivered, closing his eyes. “What happened to me?”

“You were rather delirious for a time… then had a seizure, and became feverish. You’ve been asleep for almost twenty-four hours.”

“Did you take me downstairs?”

“No.”

“Did I try to kill myself?”

“Did you?”

“I dreamed that I did. In the laundry room. I shot the wall.”

“That didn’t happen. I washed your sheets, after you vomited on them. Crowley stayed with you. That was when you seized the first time. It happened twice more before you fell asleep.”

Dean was crying. The silent, motionless weeping of a man in terrible, insurmountable pain.

“You saw Sam?” Castiel asked, gently.

“Older,” Dean murmured, the one word saying all that Cas needed to know; it was guilt that had torn Dean apart in his fever dreams. Guilt that he hadn’t saved his brother, that the success of slamming the gates of Hell had required a sacrifice.

(and that the sacrifice had been Sam instead of Dean)

“How could you tell?”

“His hair, lines around his eyes. I just _knew._ And he was bleeding. Gunshot wound. Right to the gut. He never had one of those.”

Castiel read between the lines; Sam hadn’t lived long enough to die of (or survive) a gunshot wound in the stomach.

Dean made a low sound of agony, then lapsed back into weeping. Castiel lowered his gaze to his hands and waited for Dean to ask for comfort. He didn’t.

He was still crying when the clock rolled over to four, and it was time to wake Crowley.

Castiel lay down in the body-heat-warm sleeping bag, but didn’t close his eyes, watching as Crowley settled onto the bed and cupped Dean’s cheek with a thick-fingered hand, gripping his jaw when Dean tried to pull away.

The first time Crowley had grabbed him like that, Castiel had almost broken Crowley’s nose. But whatever twisted bond the two of them had, it was beneficial.

Castiel thought of Dean’s father, of the firm hand and soldier-like training of his upbringing, and looked again at the grasp Crowley had on him, the way Dean melted into the touch like the roughness of it was comforting.

Crowley dragged his thumb across Dean’s cheek, smearing away tears, bending his thumb so his fingernail left a scratch under Dean’s eye.

Castiel closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

***

Crowley pushed his thumbnail against the soft spot of Dean’s jaw until the last of the tenseness dropped from his shoulder. He let go, and Dean’s head nodded down against his chest, cheek and jaw marked with crescent-moon fingernail markings.

“Better?” he asked, as tenderly as he could muster in a voice thick with exhaustion.

Dean nodded, slowly collapsing, limb by limb, until his head hit the pillow, and he was asleep again.

“I know you’re awake,” Crowley said into the dark, his eyes watering for no explicable reason.

“Just because I’m not asleep yet does not mean I am awake,” Castiel retorted, then paused. “You know what I mean.”

“Did he try to kill himself?”

“I doubt it. If he had the intent, he likely would have—”

“Shut up.”

“Gladly.”

There was an awkward, relieved silence.

“Just an episode, then?” Crowley murmured.

“I don’t think a full-blown psychosis is _just_ anything.”

“Happens to the best of us. You played god during yours, I became king.”

“That wasn’t—”

“What did you call it?”

“Delusions of grandeur,” Castiel mumbled.

“Delusions.” Crowley repeated.

“Shut up.”

“Never.”

Crowley buried his face in his hands and abruptly began to cry.

Castiel startled, even though Crowley didn’t make a sound. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t _know,_ ” Crowley muttered, more annoyed than upset. “It keeps happening. Side effect of suddenly being human, I think. My mind sends me on a guilt-trip at every opportunity.”

“Sounds… uncomfortable.”

“Haven’t you been getting them too?”

“Not as such,” Castiel made a gesture that was reminiscent of a shrug. “I was not devoid of compassion before I was human.”

“Lucky you.”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

Crowley let the silence sit, aching, for a moment, then lifted his head from his hands. “Sam had the right idea.”

“It is always easier to be the sacrifice than the survivor,” Castiel said, eyes gleaming with unshed tears.

“Don’t cry,” Crowley told him. “You don’t cry. If you cry, it’s over. Our own personal canary.”

“I don’t understand that reference,” Castiel tilted his head.

“Canary in the coal mine. Miners would bring canaries into coal mines with them, so that any dangerous gases would kill the canary before it killed the miners, so they would know to get out.”

 _Maybe,_ Crowley thought, watching as Castiel processed that, then promptly broke into tears, _I shouldn’t have picked the most blatant example of humanity’s casual cruelty._

“Bloody hell,” he muttered. Too loudly, it turned out, because Dean stirred, blinking up at Castiel.

“Why’re you crying?” he mumbled, voice thick with sleep.

“Canaries,” Crowley explained, patting Castiel’s shoulder.

Apparently satisfied with that, Dean rolled over and went back to sleep.

Crowley looked at Castiel, and their eyes met for a moment. That was all it took for tears to turn into laughter.


End file.
